In 1987 being a filmmaker in Toronto meant having to pick a side. It’s hard to remember now, or even imagine, where all that heat was coming from, but it wasn’t fun, mostly, or productive, though the city did host the Experimental Film Congress a couple of years later, which brought into full public display all of the tensions and difficulties and unspoken ‘truths’ and when it was over things were much better. Anyways, I was working at CFMDC (Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre) in 1987, and hoping to make some gesture towards solidarity (do we really have to hate each other so much?) I had a chat with Annette Mangaard at LIFT and Gary McLaren at what was left of the Funnel, and floated the idea of a three-headed screening. We would all pick some movies and show them at a local bar, and CFMDC would pay rental fees. In the head-in-the-ground spirit of the moment, I think we all picked each other’s movies, and left me to write some inflationary juvenilia which was glued up on sidings and lampposts. There were a few more of these efforts, but Tuesday, October 13, 1997 (see poster above) was the first one. Beautiful films, beautiful beer, beautiful friends.
The Tyranny of Architecture by Annette Mangaard
Displacement Studies by Peter Chapman
Moving Picture Trilogy by Gary McLaren
Tree Tale by Amy Bodman
One Woman Waiting by Josephine Massarrella
Primiti Too Taa by Ed Ackerman
Shadow Project by Ian Cochrane
Layton Symphony by Gary Popovich
Illapse by Michael Wojewoda and Sharon Cook
Flamingo’s Bigi Wonderland by Robert Kennedy
Book of Lies by Mike Hoolboom
There is a Rally by Keith Hlady
Film Art From Toronto. Some of the most innovative cinema produced today is being made right here in Toronto. Three organizations have come together for the first time to present an evening of what Canadian film will look like in the year 2000. Film works by the Funnel, LIFT and CFMDC present a cinema of immaculate perception, a cinema whose independence of vision was leavened without the dough of Hollywood North. Tuesday, October 13, 1987. At the Rivoli, 334 Queen Street West, 9pm. $3 admission. Local filmmakers will be present.
